Neighborhood Missionary Work
By GEO. O. STATES.
I HAD an experience the last Sabbath in May which I wish to relate. Six years ago a stranger came into our neighborhood and rented a farm close to my place. I soon visited the family, and found they were without God or hope. From that time until they moved away this spring, I frequently visited them and gave them reading matter. Friday, May 28, while I was irrigating my orchard, I was strongly impressed that I must visit them again. They now live several miles away, and it was after four o’clock before I could start. I reached their home just before the Sabbath, very weary, as I had walked much of the way. The man, with the help of two little boys, was looking after nearly eighty acres of wheat and alfalfa, besides the usual farm work. Those acquainted with an irrigated country will realize something of the amount of work involved. It was 9 P. M. before the chores were done. They at once began asking questions regarding the true seventh day. I found that a minister had made them a three-hour visit two nights before, and had tried to show them that Sunday was the true seventh day, and that sprinkling was just as much baptism as is immersion. They asked me questions, and I read Bible answers; and before I knew it, it was eleven o’clock. I at once retired. Soon after, I became very nervous, and feared I should have but little rest that night. I said: “Lord, thou knowest that I did not intend to transgress the laws of health, but here is this family hungering for the third angel’s message. I am thy servant, and am here giving them thy truth; and now, Lord, give me rest.” I at once went to sleep, and in the morning awoke so refreshed that before I knew it I was singing, “Wonderful peace.” After breakfast I gave them a reading on our definite message, in which they were intensely interested. They had asked their minister to explain the third angel’s message and the mark of the beast. He told them the book of Revelation was a sealed book, and there was no use of worrying over what God had sealed. I told them how sorry I was to have lived so near them for six years and not have had health to even sit down and read the Bible with them and give them God’s message. The woman said, “Elder States, you do not know the good you did us as from time to time you dropped in with reading matter and spoke a few words.” As it was time to start for meeting, I asked to pray with them. As we bowed, the woman said, “Now, children, Elder States is going to talk to the Lord; listen to every word he says.” I surely felt the divine presence, and not only were the children listening, but the Lord was truly there. As I prayed, asking that the Lord would touch their hearts, that Christ would come and reign in that home, and that they might understand his truth, there was weeping, and the father was quietly saying, Amen. The woman told me as I bade them good-by that she had been keeping the Sabbath ever since they moved to the place where they now live; and the man said, “Elder States, I have not sworn for over five months.” They urged me18to visit them as often as my health would permit, and promised to arrange to attend meetings and to send the children to Sabbath school. This experience has certainly been an encouragement to me, and I know God has used me in my affliction for the advancement of his work. It is nearly twenty-nine years since I, with my family, came to Colorado. Sabbath, Nov. 7, 1885, I got several Sabbath keepers together and held the first Seventh-day Adventist meeting in what now comprises the Western Colorado Conference. We now have seventeen churches, with a membership of four hundred and sixty-five. While my labors have taken me over much of Colorado, southern Wyoming, Arizona, and Utah, still what is called Surface Creek Mesa has always been my home. Over twenty years ago an effort was made to erect a church here, but it did not succeed. Our church numbers thirty-four, and we have two lots in a fine location, paid for, and quite a little material and money on hand. Our church building will be of cement, twenty-six by thirty-four feet, with octagon corners. There will be a basement for church school. If this message is going in other places as rapidly as here in my old home, it will soon swell into the loud cry. Courage, brethren and sisters, the city is almost in sight; I can almost see its pearly gates. And then we who have looked for it for so long shall hear the words, “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”